Darts professional Martin Schindler has reached the quarterfinals at the UK Open in Minehead for the first time in his career. The 26-year-old surprisingly beat world number seven Jonny Clayton (Wales) 10:8 in the most important tournament since the World Cup on Saturday evening.
Schindler qualified for the round of the top 16 for only the second time since 2020. In the world rankings, the World Cup participant will most likely improve by at least one place. From Monday, Schindler will probably be ranked 26th there even if they lose the next match, which is higher than ever.
On Friday, “The Wall” knocked out two-time world champion Adrian Lewis in the fifth round. Against Clayton, Schindler was able to rely primarily on his checkouts. An outstanding 52.6 percent of his doubles shots landed on target, including several high finishes over 100 points.
In the round of the last eight, Schindler now meets the Englishman Andrew Gilding, a supposedly feasible task.
For the two-time world champion Peter Wright from Scotland, on the other hand, Saturday was the end of the line. “Snakebite” lost 8:10 to Welsh veteran Richie Burnett.
The remaining six German players had already failed on Friday. World Cup semi-finalist Gabriel Clemens lost his fourth round match once morest Belgian top player Dimitri van den Bergh 5:10, Florian Hempel lost to Richie Burnett from England 9:10.
Ricardo Pietreczko and Daniel Klose were eliminated in round two, Pascal Rupprecht and qualifier Lukas Wenig in their opening matches.
The major tournament is the first top event of the year and, with 160 participants, also the largest on the professional tour. All 128 tour card holders are automatically entitled to start. The UK Open is also known as the “FA Cup of Darts” because of the cup-like system without a seeding list. The total prize money is $600,000, of which $110,000 goes to the winner.
Darts, UK Open: All round of 16 at a glance
- Brendan Dolan – Andrew Gilding 8:10
- Nathan Aspinall – Joe Cullen 10:2
- Peter Wright – Richie Burnett 8:10
- William O’Connor – Adam Gawlas 3:10
- Jonny Clayton – Martin Schindler 8:10
- Gary Anderson – Dimitri Van den Bergh 8:10
- Jeffrey de Zwaan – Rob Cross 7:10
- Michael van Gerwen – Luke Humphries 10:4
